Had one then, and I have one now, intimately interwoven with our gazillions of other dreams. And like Martin Luther’s mine isn’t a normal sleeping dream.

Oh, I had those too, at least as a kid. And they often weren’t that friendly! I most vividly remember one involving a gold fish, and a game of running man, or rather running boy back then: I was meandering thru some huge building, that for some reason felt like a school. I still remember entering one room and finding a really big goldfish in a tank on some sort of high table: it was so high I actually had to look up to it!As I did, it winked at me, and I was totally terrified, because that day
in school I had just learned that fish can’t blink for lack of eyelids!

I really broke the land speed record for humans that night, and not just
because of the goldfish: every corridor I ran through had the lights
going out right above my head! Woke up sweating from head to toe, and I
don’t know for sure anymore, but I don’t believe sleep was still a safe
place that night!

But time heals all, and nightmares became more and more sparse. At some
point they stopped, but what remained was flat, inconsequential. I
dreamed, and sometimes remembered fragments, but that was it….

Then the Web told me about lucid dreaming, where you learn to detect you
are dreaming, and then jump in and shape it to do whatever you want. I
tried the various things, like electronic gadgets or certain foods
before sleeping. Somehow though, it wasn’t for me, because I never got
the hang of it. I’m funny that way, I just can’t do what some others do
just like that. Those images full of colored dots that turn into a 3D
image when you look at them in a certain way? Can’t do it! But I can
construct the birthing process of a ball lightning right in my mind, no
paper and pencils required.

After the lucid dreaming craze, remembering dreams became a rarity. And
if I did, the stories were all weird somehow, but at the same time
totally acceptable. Except that one time, quite some time before I
actually heard I would become single again:

First person perspective, lying face down on top of a huge white arch.
And I do mean HUGE! I reckon ground level would have easily been a mile
away, just follow the direction of gravity. And someone had actually
taken that first step: Linda was dangling from my outstretched arm, and
being the voluptuous being she was, something wasn’t quite right! I
tried whatever I could, but just imagine that feeling of slipping
fingers, and the woman you love becoming smaller and smaller, heading
for something you know you can’t save her from…

So when the divorce loomed, I did just what the dream showed, simply
because it hadn’t been really clear to me what it meant to tell me.
Afterwards I figured it probably had nothing to tell me, other than
providing a dress rehersal so the eventual crash wouldn’t break me.

I still don’t remember many of my dreams, but I’m dead sure my nights
are not spent just lying around either! At times I used to wake with
this nagging pain, right between my shoulder blades, which felt like my
legs feel when I’ve been running. Could it be that the wings I use at
night give me trouble in the morning, even though you can’t see them
then?

Isn’t it weird, that some said to me I’m a Guardian, and that both my
novels have me playing a similar role? In fact, I even feel like that
during day, like at the station: standing mostly alone, eyes never fixed
on anyone in particular, but at the same time seeing them all! The
moment someone makes eye contact, it’s time to move on….

And of course dreaming the whole day through, because those are the dreams I do remember vividly!

I’ve given up trying to remember my nightly dreams, simply because
waking life has already been feeding me a steady stream of wild syncs
anyhow. And I know for sure that whatever I do in my sleep is all
working towards whatever dreams I may set for myself while awake. And if
you know it’s all good, why ask for confirmation?

And since this article took me the whole trip home, I figured it was
finished and sent it before leaving the train. This one had actually
quite a problem stopping in the right place, because he parked those
thousands of tons of steel right at the end of the platform, about a
hundred meters later than usual. And then, opening the door and getting
out, I nearly bumped into this:

It may be hard to believe, but this ad is for Coelho’s new novel calledthe Guardian. At least that is what ‘Beschermengel’ stands for in Dutch.
And if you think I just heard about the book and decided to mix it in,
then you can find the timestamp of my phone camera in the bottom right
corner, honestly! Isn’t that a coincidence weirder than dreams? Writing
about being a Guardian, and then stepping off the train right in front
of that ad board I’d never seen?